Drug delivery devices for setting and dispensing a single or multiple doses of a liquid medicament are as such well-known in the art. Generally, such devices have substantially a similar purpose as that of an ordinary syringe.
Drug delivery devices, in particular pen-type injectors have to meet a number of user-specific requirements. For instance, with patient's suffering chronic diseases, such like diabetes, the patient may be physically infirm and may also have impaired vision. Suitable drug delivery devices especially intended for home medication therefore need to be robust in construction and should be easy to use. Furthermore, manipulation and general handling of the device and its components should be intelligible and easy understandable. Moreover, a dose setting as well as a dose dispensing procedure must be easy to operate and has to be unambiguous.
Typically, such devices comprise a housing or a particular cartridge holder, which is adapted to receive a cartridge at least partially filled with the medicament to be dispensed. The device further comprises a drive mechanism, usually having a displaceable piston rod which is adapted to operably engage with a piston of the cartridge. By means of the drive mechanism and its piston rod, the piston of the cartridge is displaceable in a distal or dispensing direction and may therefore expel a predefined amount of the medicament via a piercing assembly, which is to be releasably coupled with a distal end section of the housing of the drug delivery device.
The medicament to be dispensed by the drug delivery device is provided and contained in a multi-dose cartridge. Such cartridges typically comprise a vitreous barrel sealed in distal direction by means of a pierceable seal and being further sealed in proximal direction by the piston. With reusable drug delivery devices an empty cartridge is replaceable by a new one. In contrast to that, drug delivery devices of disposable type are to be entirely discarded when the medicament in the cartridge has been completely dispensed or used-up.
With such multi-dose drug delivery devices at least a last dose limiting mechanism is required to inhibit setting of a dose exceeding the amount of medicament left in the cartridge. This is to avoid a potentially dangerous situation for the user believing that a set dose is entirely injected. There already exist some drug delivery devices with end-of-content mechanisms or last dose mechanisms.
Drug delivery devices such like pen type injectors also provide a dose indicating mechanism which is operable to display the size of a set dose to a user. Typically, the housing of such drug delivery devices comprises a dose indicating window in which a number representing the size of the dose shows up.
Especially with elderly patients or users suffering impaired vision, reading of such dose indicating numbers is sometimes difficult. With devices adapted for injection of e.g. insulin, typical dose sizes may vary between 0 and 120 I.U. (International Units) of insulin. Due to the rather compact design and limited geometrical dimensions of typical drug delivery devices the size of such dose indicating numbers is fairly small. For visually impaired persons correct reading of comparatively tiny numbers may therefore be rather difficult. However, since such drug delivery devices are intended for self-medication treatment, it is of importance, that the user is able to correctly determine the size of dose actually set.